Member bios
- Marea Atkinson
- John Barbour
- Steve Carson
- Kathleen Connellan
- Sonia Donnellan
- Ruth Fazakerley
- Gini Lee
- Kay Lawrence
- Steve Loo
- Jim Moss
- Ian North
- Esther Ratner
- Olga Sankey
- Irmina Van Niele
- Dr Linda Marie Walker
- Dr Pam Zeplin
Marea Atkinson
- School: School of Art, Architecture and Design
Academic Profile: Lecturer
Research focus: the nexus between visual art and astronomy; sound and gastronomy.
Recent work:
Exhibitions Reflections from Elsewhere that explored light and darkness based on installation works of artificial, visual/sound environments that inhabited vacant rooms and spaces investigating time, light and the semblance of nature. Liquid Space was a research project with a series of digital prints that explored the inter-relationship between nature and astronomy. The Shard Series, (Oxford University Museum, UK, 2003), explored the interpretations of spatial concepts in the work of Lucio Fontana.
Collections: The Spectator Series, an ongoing project, has taken the form of sculpture, prints, neon, installation, that explores time, aspects of power, humanity and nature. Selections of these works are held in major collections, including Brooklyn Museum, NY, Kornhaus Museum, Switzerland, Detroit Institute of Art, MI, and the Australian National Gallery, Canberra.
Key Publications: Her work has been published in Memorie Della Societa Astronomica Italiana.
John Barbour
School: School of Art, Architecture and Design
Academic Profile: Research Degrees Coordinator
Research focus:
Recent work:
Key Publications:
Collections:
Awards:
Other:
Steven Carson
School: School of Art, Architecture and Design
Academic Profile:
Research focus: improvisation as a generative strategy for installation
practice; décor and domestic style in relation to contemporary visual arts
practice; the appropriation of marginal creative practices by professional
contemporary artists.
Recent work: Recent work has been published through individual exhibitions
including Air Kiss, (2002 at the Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide);
Decorum: Retro Chic, (2001 at Global Arts Link, Ipswich); Lines Going Somewhere
(2001 at Upstart Gallery, Port Adelaide); Telephone 2000, (University Art
Museum, University Of South Australia); Memento 2000, (CAST (Contemporary Art
Services Tasmania) Hobart). Additional recent works have been published within
curated group exhibitions including: less ordinary legends, (2004 Toowoomba
Regional Art Gallery); Homostrata, (2003 Artspace Adelaide Festival Centre);
Lounging Topographies, (2003 Light Square Gallery, Adelaide).
Kathleen Connellan
School: School of Art, Architecture and Design
Academic Profile:
Research focus: Kathleen has been teaching art and design history and theory for two
decades. Her PhD focused upon the meaning of home and the experience of
modernity in South Africa. A major research question within that project
concerned the existence of a comparable South African domestic appliance
revolution in the kitchens and homes of Apartheid South Africa.
Consequently, her research and teaching has since been informed by the
politics of race in oppressive regimes and specifically how design and art
are implicated in these power relations. Over the last five years Kathleen's
publications have concentrated upon the politics, aesthetics and ethics of
the colour white in design.
More about Kathleen
Awards: 2008 Teaching and Learning Grant, University of South Australia for the
project
Theory Spine
Sonia Donnellan
School: School of Art, Architecture and Design
Academic Profile: Lecturer
Research focus: representations of the 'maternal experience' in contemporary
visual arts; use by artists of feminist psychoanalytical theories to inform
their work and how this in turn contributes to contemporary understandings of
maternal subjectivity. I am particularly interested in how artists have
responded to differing perpectives of maternal ambivalence, both as experienced
by the mother and also by the child for the mother. Included in my research will
be the theories of postmodernists, such as Julia Kristeva and Toril Moi, that
look at the maternal subject and the mother in visual art. As a
sculptor/installation artist, my research is studio based and uses three
dimensional objects, that are of and from the home. They will be combined with
forms that I have created from mixed media. One such media that I am currently
looking to incorporate into my studio research is sugar and I will be
undertaking a patisserie course to explore this potential and develop further a
cross disciplinary practice. My current research builds on issues that have been
a focus for my work throughout my undergraduate programme.
Ruth Fazakerley
BSc Hons (Adelaide), BA Hons (UniSA), MFA (Dundee)
School: School of
Art, Architecture and Design
Academic Profile: Ruth's teaching
and research experience is in the field of contemporary visual
art and culture. She has taught in studio- and lecture-based
areas such as drawing, painting, public art, (visual arts)
professional practice, urban cultures, and contemporary
Australian art. Ruth has worked in multiple professional roles
within the arts industry as a visual artist (exhibiting
painting, sculptural installation and video works), arts
administrator, and independent arts writer. Her expertise lies
within the field of public art and its discourse (including
policy, funding and management), with a particular interest in
considering the effects of such discourse on everyday urban
social and spatial relations.
More about Ruth
Research focus: Through the study of particular public art
projects, I am concerned with examining the ways in which public
art discourse is shaped and reproduced across a variety of
sites, including those of art, government, retailing, transport,
and urban design; and to consider the effects of such discourse
on everyday socio-spatial relations. Keywords: public art, urban
design, vision, mobility, spectatorship, subjectivity,
governmentality, cultural policy, public space.
Awards: Mawson Lakes Fellowship Program Scholarship (2003); Joyner Bequest
(1999); Anne & Gordon Samstag Scholarship (1995)
Gini Lee
School: School of Art, Architecture and Design
Academic Profile:
Research focus:
Recent work:
Key Publications:
Collections:
Awards:
Other:
Kay Lawrence
School: School of Art, Architecture and Design
Academic Profile: Previous Head of School, South Australian School of Art
Research focus: practices and meanings of textiles with a particular focus on
gender, place and representation.My practice encompasses woven tapestry, drawing
and other textile processes as well as writing about contemporary Australian
textiles. I make work for both public and private contexts.
Recent work: My most recent work was a collaborative work with designer John
Nowland commissioned for the glazed entry of the State Library of South
Australia. The work comprised four elements, a stone greeting, a wall text, a
carpet and a coil of string. Drawn from research into European and Kuarna
knowledge systems, each element makes reference to the connection between
textile processes and metaphors and the transmission of knowledge through
narrative and observation. Photograph of glazed entry showing string ellipse.
Photograph by John Gollings
Steve Loo
School: School of Art, Architecture and Design
Academic Profile: Program Director of the Architecture Program and Senior
Lecturer in design and theory with specific foci on urban design, cross cultural
studies and digital experimentation.
Research focus: general research interest is on the relationship between
ontology and the production of theory. He has published on topics such as
banality and the generic within an imperative for a new theory of subjectivity
in capitalism; the relations between language, affect and life; image and the
machinic as part of a biophilosophy of the contemporary subject, alternative
ethico-aesthetic and ecological models for human action; and the indeterminacy
of experimental digital thinking. He has also an interest in communities,
consultation, and social justice.
Other: Steve is a practicing architect and Partner of architectural and
interpretive practice Mulloway Studio; and strategic planning, urban design and
learning research collaborative partnership Mulloway Fisher.
Jim Moss
School: School of Art, Architecture and Design
Academic Profile: Research Degrees Coordinator
Research focus: Jim Moss teaches Representing Visual Culture VA
and Contemporary Art and Visual Culture.
Jim's areas of expertise include
medieval
European, nineteenth century European, twentieth century modern and
contemporary cultural theory. Romanticism is central to
his interests because it is the dominant theme in ambitious, world
changing, avant-garde representations of reality spanning ages from medieval
to current times.
More about Jim
Key Publications: Kathleen Connellan and Jim Moss had a paper accepted for
the FUTUREGROUND design conference in Melbourne in October. This paper conflates
the appliance revolution and contemporary design theory in the dual repressive
contexts of revolutionary modernism and postrevolutionary contemporary
consumerism, This paper is to be published in the conference publications.
Ian North
(Vic., Wtgn), MA (Flin) MA, MFA (UNM)
School: School of Art, Architecture and Design
Academic Profile: Adjunct Professor of Visual Arts (with both School of Art and
Hawke Institute); Visiting Researcher, Art History, University of Adelaide
Research focus: contemporary art, including the intersection of painting and
photography (pursued in studio as well as academically); re-examining the
relationship of aesthetics and content; matters concerning landscape and beauty
in relation to cultural identity and globalism, viewed from both art and
philosophical perspectives; impact of Indigenous art on non-Indigenous art.
Recent work: Sail Away (paintings) Apartment, Melbourne, 2004 Key works:
Canberra Suite, 1980-81 (colour photographs); Pseudo-Panoramas (colour
photographs plus painting) three series 1985-1988
Key Publications: "Open Letter to the Hon. Mike Rann, Premier and Minister for
the Arts, Concerning the Matter of a Museum of Contemporary Art for South
Australia," Broadsheet, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, 31. 2. 2002:
8-9
"StarAboriginality." Postcolonial+Art: Where Now? Ed. Charles Green. Sydney:
Artspace Visual Art Centre, 2001. n.p.
Expanse: Aboriginalies, spatialities and the politics of ecstasy Adelaide:
University of South Australia Art Museum, 1998
The Art of Margaret Preston (ed., co-author) 1980
The Art of Dorrit Black, 1979
Hans Heysen Centennial Retrospective (ed., co-author) 1977
Collections: Represented in the following public collectionsÑArtbank; Art
Gallery of NSW; Art Gallery of SA; Flinders University; Griffith University;
National Gallery of Australia; National Gallery of Victoria; Queensland Art
Gallery and the Riddoch Gallery, Mt. Gambier.
Awards: Best Book on art published in Australasia, 2001, Art Association of
Australia and New Zealand: Christine Nicholls and Ian North, Kathleen Petyarre:
Genius of Place (Wakefield Press), (joint winner with Andrew Sayers, Australian
Art )
Esther Ratner
BFA Washington University (USA). MFA University of Michigan (USA)
School: School of Art, Architecture and Design
Academic Profile: Senior lecturer in Industrial Design
Research focus: the effect of matter's tangible surface attributes; texture,
topography, thermal conductivity, vibrational frequency, chemical structure,
electromagnetic fields; on human tactile perception and aesthetic preference.
Recent work: Her current research seeks to empirically test the hypothesis that
materials have a physical memory signature, a history of transformations and
interventions that can be 'felt' via physical contact. If this premise is proved
valid, it supports a theory that she has developed called 'The Animate Object
Theory', which presents a hierarchical rather than binary condition of life and
suggests that designers and makers of objects have an effect on the animacy of
the things they create. Esther teaches in
the industrial design program, specialising in form and material considerations
as influenced by cultural, aesthetic, and theoretical factors.
More
about Esther
Other: Prior to moving to Australia four years ago, she taught industrial design
for 11 years and had been the Associate Director of the School of Design at
Arizona State University (USA) following four years as Industrial Design
Supervisor for the Kellwood Co. (a Fortune 500 Corporation and the largest
recreation products manufacturer in the United States).
Olga Sankey
School: School of Art, Architecture and Design
Academic Profile: Program Director: Visual Arts (Honours)
Research focus: I am interested in exploring the relationship between word and
image, the visual properties of text and in exploring ways of incorporating
text, printed or hand written, within an artwork. The abstract nature of the
alphabetic writing system allows for the visual manipulation of text and words,
and the terrain that lies between writing and image can be examined at different
points and investigated in many different ways to challenge established
conventions of reading and interpretation. I am interested in Concrete poetry
and in the possibilities of manipulating meaning using visual strategies such as
repetition, fragmentation and overlapping. In my own practice I explore this
relationship, whose history is intertwined with the history of printing, using
primarily traditional and digital printmaking techniques.
Irmina Van Neale
School: School of Art, Architecture and Design
Academic Profile: PhD Candidate. Thesis Title:
Research focus: The project, AMBIVALENT BELONGING, is a studio based
investigation into the elusive concept 'belonging', from my particular migrant
position. I am interested in ideas related to the meaning of being 'in place'
and in the possibilities and dilemmas that arise from being in- and out of place
at the same time. My focus is on subjective experience, memories and emotions,
including the importance of walking and talking. I wonder where and how a sense
of cultural belonging might be located, geographically and linguistically, and
struggle with elusive notions of hybridity and gaps.
I play with the idea that one might find/form/recognize one's identity amidst
scattered fragments of meaning. I challenge some commonly held assumptions
regarding migrants, settlement and cultural difference. It's also about what's
just above and below the surface, linked to notions of home. I apply a
cross-disciplinary approach, drawing on theories in visual art, philosophy,
psychoanalysis, architecture, post-colonial cultural theory and geography,
forming connections with autobiographical research, and art practice. When
belonging is no longer a given methods of inventiveness become necessary.
In studio work I map the territories of these experiences, trying to put
continuities and discontinuities together. The whole process is expressive,
trying to make visible the weirdness of a displaced life, within a critical
context. How to put all these different elements in place is the challenge.
Dr Linda Marie Walker
School: School of Art, Architecture and Design
Academic Profile: Senior Lecturer Interior Architecture, Theory and Studio
Research focus: Linda Marie Walker is a writer, artist, and curator, with interests in
conceptual and minimalist art practices, experimental writing practices,
ficto-critical research methodologies, electronic thinking,
spatial-relations, bodies, and movement. Her research area is titled: 'an
archaeology of surfaces'. Linda Marie teaches Advanced Theory of
Interior Architecture, Theory of Interior
Architecture and Writing Culture Theory.
She has a range of online publications, including Line of Sight.
More about Linda Marie
Dr Pamela Zeplin
BA(Hons)(Monash), M.A. (Monash)
School: School of Art, Architecture and Design
Academic Profile: Senior Lecturer in Art History and Theory. PhD Candidate
College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. Thesis Title: "Re-orienting
Australia: Art & the Asia-Pacific 1970-1987"
Research focus: cross cultural-issues, cultural diversity in art education,
contemporary performance and flight and sexuality
Recent work:
Key Publications: Pamela has been publishing a range of criticism and essays, as
well as presenting research at major conferences throughout the region since
1985
Other: Pam Zeplin is Portfolio Leader of Research
Education in Art, Architecture and Design. As a widely published author, artist
and educator, her research and teaching practice specialises in contemporary
non-Indigenous and Indigenous visual culture in Australia and the Asia-Pacific
region. This provides a strong foundation for research in regionality,
intercultural art education, performance and collaborative practices. As well as
supervising numerous PhD and MA research students to successful completion in
theory and studio programs, Pamela's teaching expertise includes Research
Methods, Arts Writing, Asia-Pacific Art, and Australian Art, Craft and Design.
More
about Pam